The Golden Acquisition of The Ring - Part 1

THE RING MAGAZINE SALE: ON THE ONE HAND........AND ON THE OTHER HAND

Part 1 -- On the One Hand........

By Charles Jay

Ring magazine, along with sister publications KO and World Boxing (not to mention Pro Wrestling Illustrated) have just been purchased by Oscar De La Hoya and his Golden Boy Companies through a subsidiary called Sports & Entertainment Publications, LLC. Almost immediately following the announcement of the sale, there was buzz throughout the boxing grapevine, both good and bad, along with a number of questions that must naturally be pondered.

Among them:

Does it constitute a groundbreaking convergence of marketing, media and promotion that will bring more beneficial attention to boxing, or a dangerous conflict of interest that will further bring down the reputation of a sport that doesn't need any more black eyes?

Should we celebrate along with the undisputed box office champion of boxing, or be suspicious that he is actually getting too powerful?

Is this a transaction that is entirely motivated by self-interest, for purposes of monopoly and manipulation, or is the intent to have an effect of improving the overall image of the industry, thus creating more value and helping everyone?

Is this even significant enough to be the focus of much discussion or concern?

This is some of the terrain we will attempt to traverse in this two-part commentary.

ON THE ONE HAND...........

I can understand exactly why De La Hoya would want to buy the publication, from a sentimental perspective. He says he grew up reading the magazine, anxiously anticipating its arrival each month. There are very few brand names that have the characteristics of recognizability and tradition, and Ring is one of them. The opportunity to revive something that is perceived in such a light is difficult for someone with sufficient financial wherewithal to pass up, and when those kinds of visions are dancing around in your head, possible conflicts of interest aren't the foremost thing on your mind.

That kind of thing is perfectly understandable to this reporter. When I was with USA Network I once did a segment on the Fifth Street Gym on Miami Beach, an admittedly rundown place but still very much a shrine to anyone who grew up with great admiration for the likes of Muhammad Ali and Angelo Dundee. When I heard shortly thereafter that the gym could probably be had for anywhere between $10-$15,000, I wished I had that kind of loose cash lying around, because it would have been great to buy it and renovate it. Not many people can say they owned the Fifth Street Gym, you know what I mean?

In this day and age, when we're seeing more and more of the money interested in combat sports gravitating toward mixed martial arts, perhaps it's refreshing to see someone ready, willing and able to make a major investment in boxing, especially one of the sport's long-standing institutions. As promoter Dan Goossen told Bernard Fernandez in one published report, “I guess we’ll just have to see how it all plays out. At this point, though, however Oscar chooses to invest his money, as long as he puts it back into boxing, should be a beneficial thing."

I think it's important for the major institutions in boxing to have some strength, for continuity's sake. It tends to present an atompshere of stability to people who look at the sport from a casual point of view (which, let's not forget, is where boxing should be trying to draw fans). And from a financial standpoint, one can be assured that the magazine couldn't possibly be in better hands.

Whether Ring has been a publication that did "clean" business from its inception is a subject of legitimate debate. And that debate may take place some other time. But what is virtually undisputable is that in recent years, Ring has been wallowing around in a kind of nether land, despite best efforts on the part of ESPN to prop it up. Editorially, it has been middling at best. It has struggled to be relevant at a time when the vast majority of boxing news is now accessed through the internet. And it wasn't really a top priority for its parent company, the Pennsylvania-based Kappa Publishing Group. Owned by a very agreeable man named Nick Karabots, Kappa is primarily involved with the publication of game and puzzle books, for which it is one of the industry leaders. But Ring was not a major profit center for Kappa, and as a result it was not on the receiving end of much significant investment, or marketing muscle.

So now the magazine - and the brand - goes from a place where it was not much more than an afterthought to a position where there is the promise of fresh ideas, innovation, expanded development, an infusion of cash, and the leverage created by having one of the leading boxing companies in the world behind it.

There exists not just the opportunity to bring back Ring specifically, but in general terms, the institution of the boxing magazine itself - a species that has been endangered for quite some time. Considering that sales of MMA-related magazines is crisp to say the least, there would appear to be no reason the right strategy could not have an appreciable impact in the area of boxing print publications.

And the Hispanic audience, which is somewhat underserved on American newsstands but remains a loyal audience, indeed a staple for many promoters, including Golden Boy, will likely have a magazine to sink their teeth into, as one would expect Ring en Espanol to be developed in a big way.

As far as the conflict of interest issues are concerned, I'm wondering about how much different this is than some of the cross-ownership we've seen in other pro sports with major media outlets. For instance, Time Warner owned the Atlanta Braves (before unloading them to Liberty Media), and at the same time owned CNN (which did sports not that long ago), Sports Illustrated, America Online and Time magazine, among others. Rupert Murdoch, who at one time owned the Los Angeles Dodgers, also, of course, owned the New York Post and a number of other newspapers in the U.S., not to mention Fox Network, which had broadcast rights to Major League Baseball that were contemporaneous with Murdoch's Dodger ownership.

The Walt Disney Company owns ESPN, which covers baseball and the NHL from a news perspective, and held broadcast rights to both sports. Simultaneously, Disney owned the NHL's Anaheim Mighty Ducks as well as the American League's Anaheim Angels. The Tribune Company, which publishes the Chicago Tribune, owns the National League's Chicago Cubs (for the time being, anyway), a team it obviously covers to an extensive degree. Back before most of you were born, and when three networks were all you got on your TV set, one of those networks - CBS - owned the New York Yankees.

And the republic didn't seem any worse off as a result.

This is an era of the major consolidation of media by huge conglomerates. That coincides with a progression where the line between news and entertainment has become more and more blurred. The aforementioned companies obviously see themselves in the entertainment business. And so whether it's sports or sitcoms or even newsmagazines, it's all entertainment, right?

Which brings us around to what is really one of the greater business objectives for the Golden Boy Companies in making this purchase, which is a convergence of a number of entertainment-related ventures, capitalizing on the leverage involved in putting two of boxing's biggest brands together - Ring and Oscar De La Hoya.

De La Hoya's group has rather quickly built itself into a position of pre-eminence among promotional organizations. You will see that kind of business savvy put into action in the way it uses the Ring name to maximize any and all cross-marketing possibilities. It's quite possible that you will one day be able to watch a Ring Television Channel - on the internet or a carrier like DirecTV, riding the strength of both the brand and the star. One could easily see (figuratively speaking of course) a Ring radio show, along with Ring theme restaurants, Ring/De La Hoya video games, a brick-and-mortar Ring Hall of Fame, maybe a clothing line to rival that of Everlast, with the accompanying string of retail stores, some of which might be located in casinos where De La Hoya agrees to make guest appearances. And that's just the beginning. With De La Hoya lending his name as an endorser, any number of promotional tie-ins with advertisers, sponsors and strategic partners is altogether possible.

It is conceivable that this would have a ripple effect that benefits the rest of boxing in a residual fashion by bringing it more acceptance by the corporate community. Then it would have the potential to increase the value of what all the industry "players" are doing, because the market space would be larger. And with De La Hoya as the point man of this marketing initiative, with support from well-known figures like Bernard Hopkins and Shane Mosley (Golden Boy Promotions partners), the prospects for "crossing over" onto the radar screen of the casual sports fan are greatly enhanced. Maybe it becomes a win-win proposition for everybody that way.

Whatever De La Hoya's company may want to do within boxing with the Ring brand, the magazine's world ratings will no doubt be a pivotal component. The ratings have almost always been identified with Ring, for better or worse. Back in the days when it was truly considered by most to be the "Bible of Boxing," those ratings were an industry standard. But when officials at the magazine, particularly Johnny Ort, were involved in falsifying records and creating dubious rankings for fighters involved with the Don King/ABC-promoted U.S. Boxing Championships in 1977, Ring took a well-deserved thrashing in terms of credibility, from which it arguably recovered during the reign of Bert Randolph Sugar and Randy Gordon in the 1980s.

Gordon, who was editor of Ring under publisher Sugar, saw a revamped ratings system, using an extensive panel of writers, as a catalyst for the magazine's resurgence.

"When Bert and I had it (the magazine), we sent a ballot to a hundred different writers," said Gordon. "I didn't always agree with it, but at least I knew there weren't any games being played."

With Golden Boy now in control of Ring, and most of the fighters in his promotional stable, including De La Hoya himself, subject to consideration for inclusion in those ratings, there are already accusations flying that such "games" will indeed be played. Ring advertises that it has a panel of over thirty media people who vote on its world ratings, and while at a quick glance not all of them appear to be eminently qualified, one way I would suggest this process be "fire-proofed" is for each of the voters' ballots to be made public. Such a transparency will avail any interested observer of all the data that went into the customary tabulations.

Whether they would ever submit to that kind of thing is anybody's guess. But it would go a long way toward assuring the public that the votes were not passing through dirty hands on their way to the printed page, in case there were any suspicions.

The position of Golden Boy CEO Richard Schaefer is that, looking at the big picture, it wouldn't be worth it to fiddle around in a nefarious way with the Ring ratings. One can understand it, I suppose, when he says he doesn't want to jeopardize the name equity - and marketing potential - Ring may have by interfering with the ratings, or the editorial content of the magazine, for that matter. "If we do something wrong, we destroy the Ring value and the brand, and that means we made a pretty poor investment," he told Dan Rafael of ESPN.com. There's a strong point to be made there, one could imagine. If Ring turned into a laughing stock far beyond what it is now - which it would risk becoming if became the house publication of Golden Boy - it would have very little in the way of crossover value. That defeats the purpose.

Well, that's the story, ON THE ONE HAND.......

But like Paul Harvey, I've got "the rest of the story."

Yes folks, ON THE OTHER HAND, Golden Boy/Ring's business model may put these guys and their new venture in a position where they'd actually be breaking the law.

Stay tuned. That's next.